Last year Mount Eerie released a new album called Night Palace which I really liked, having given it a 7.5. My main complaint was it's a little inaccessible and a bit bloated (I stand by the bloat one, the inaccessibility not so much) but in that bloat it had a really great (hidden??) gem, I Spoke With A Fish which has stuck with me since the album's release. It's a very pretty and bizarre song which I don't think has gotten the recognition it deserves. Around the time that the album first released, I went to Genius to figure out what the lyrics were on about but when I first took a look it had no annotations so I was forced to try to figure out what it meant by myself, and I quite like my interpretation though it's not too dissimilar from other people's interpretations on Genius.
1st verse:
I told a fish:
"What you see as a palace is running water"
The fish said:
"No. What you see as those mountains is flowing matter"
I said:
"OK"
When I first heard it, I thought it was a little funny and had no meaning. Looking at it now it's meaning seems pretty clear but I'm unsure if that's because it was always clear and I was dumb or because I've thought about it but I'm going to talk about it regardless. Phil and the fish both have different views of the world, Phil tries to explain to the fish that his view is somehow incorrect because Phil sees the fish's palace as just a stream of water. Phil is unable or unwilling to see the fish's point of view, only his own. The fish responds with his own observation, he says the mountains nearby are flowing matter. The fish here is seeing the bigger picture, time as a whole while Phil is seeing time only how his own viewpoint allows him to. Nobody lives long enough to see a mountains matter flow, but that doesn't it's not happening. The verse ends with Phil seeming willing to consider the fish's point of view. On the vinyl it mentions this line is inspired by the philosophy of The Mountains and Waters Sūtra.
2nd verse:
And after our talk I saw the wall of rock as a wave in the middle of breaking
A rock slide echoes across the gorge
My small perspective fading
And who am I but a blink of the eye?
A stance that a river would take
If it even wanted to pause
The first line is Phil allowing himself to view time in a wider perspective, he compares a mountain to a wave in the breaking, realising that its current state is not its final form, just a step in its path. Just like a wave, crashing and reforming over and over the mountain will continue to grow and reform for as long as time endlessly flows. The following line just hammers that idea in further, a rockslide is just another transformation that occurs in time, though a change easier for a human to perceive than the subtle change of a mountain's movement. Phil then contemplates his own existence, realising that a the length of a human's life is nothing in comparison to that of the greater world around us. The last two lines compare Phil's life to "A stance a river would take if it even wanted to pause". I interpreted this as Phil realising that time will endlessly flow whether he likes it or not, it'd be unnatural for a river to stop flowing just as it would be for a human to stop changing.
3rd verse:
Recorded music is a statue of a waterfall
The flashing glint on the marble where the eye once was
On a taxidermied marlin's frozen leap
With or without me there to see
Rain begins to fall
Back into the creek
Phil compares music to a statue of a waterfall, a snapshot of a moment in time which can allow us to act like the waterfall, or sound in the case of music, has stopped flowing and the moment has been captured, unchanging with time. I'm not completely sure what the next line is about but it might be talking about a marble statue with a missing eye? Throughout the song Phil seems to be subtly talking about how humans are no longer connected to nature, so to go from a statue of a waterfall to a statue of a human felt a bit off to me so I can't help but worry that I'm missing something, though it's possible this contrast was here to help exemplify out how unnatural it is to try to stop time at all? I might be losing it though. I think this is referring to a statue being an imperfect method of capturing a moment, the statue has slowly degraded and is no longer an accurate representation of what it was meant to capture. This may be Phil acknowledging that no matter how hard we try, our attempts to preserve a moment in time is futile in the end. The following line continues the idea of capturing a moment in time, it describes a marlin captured mid leap, its once dynamic movement now static. As for the last three lines, I think they're are all meant to be read as one. Phil is realising that whether people are around to see it, nature will continue to move and flow. This is reminiscent of the classic thought experiment "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?".
4th verse:
I told a fish:
"I like how you move through the water as one flowing muscle"
The fish said:
"I dig your style too man"
In the final verse, instead of Phil trying to teach the fish about a world that he only has a limited view of like he did in the beginning, he instead just gives the fish a compliment which the fish reciprocates. I think I Spoke with a Fish is a song about broadening ones viewpoint. Everyone sees the world differently and this song is Phil reminding us that instead of trying to correct others on things that we may lack the perspective or knowledge to understand, it's better to consider the ideas of other even if we don't agree with it and to treat everyone and everything with respect even if they don't do the same for us, like the fish did for Phil. I think if instead of explaining his point of view the fish said fuck off and blocked Phil I doubt Phil would've come to the conclusion he did but I digress.
Thanks for reading, I feel like I say this every couple of blog posts but sorry for the lack of posts. I didn't spend a month writing this or anything, more like an hour but I've been lacking inspiration and I don't want to force out some random blog post. I've written and deleted a "The New Sound" review blogpost like 20 times now so I imagine it'll be coming soon. Or never.